The eagle on Iroko has flown home

November 16, this year Chinua Achebe would have been 83 and so the yearly celebration to mark his birthday, an annual ritual for the literary world would at least assume a different form from this year. From primary school at St Phillips Central School Ogidi, Anambra State and Central School Nekede, Owerri, Imo State, Achebe left his footprints as a very brilliant student having obtained full scholarship to Dennis Memorial Grammar School Onitsha and Government College Umuahia. At Umuahia he completed his secondary school in a record four years instead of the five, passing the Cambridge ordinary level with five distinctions and one credit. The credit ironically was in English Literature. For a student nick-named “Dictionary”, he must have felt disappointed.

He proceeded to University College Ibadan through a nation-wide entrance examination. At Ibadan, he was admitted to study medicine but changed to the arts at the expense of losing his bursary scholarship and had to pay tuition. After graduating, Achebe moved on and commenced a career with the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) in 1954.He moved rapidly up the ladder and was appointed Director of External Broadcasting. Whilst at NBS, he utilised his spare time in writing.

The turning point however was an encounter at Ibadan with his English professor who told him that his entry in a short story competition” lacked form”. Achebe declared thereafter “it dawned on me that despite her excellent mind and background, she was not capable of teaching across cultures, from her English culture to mine. It was in these circumstances that I was moved to put down on paper the story that became Things Fall Apart.

Yet, Things Fall Apart, the epic ground-breaking novel would have been lost to the world. Achebe himself told the story of how in his naivety he sent the original and only manuscript of the novel to a typing agency in London for an expert touch in typing and preparation for publishing. Strangely the agency went to sleep after receiving full payment of £32 (thirty two pounds) from Achebe. In 1956, this was a lot of money. Anyway by some fortuitous turn of event, his colleague at NBS, an English lady, Angela Beattie’s intervention saved the day and the agency returned to Achebe a typed and well prepared work ready for publishing.

Achebe once reminisced “I look back now at those events and state categorically that had the manuscript been lost, I most certainly would have been irreversibly discouraged from continuing my writing career.” And the world never would have read such intriguing, captivating and enthralling stories of not only Things Fall Apart where Achebe expressed himself in naked gratitude to his Igbo culture and history but also No Longer At Ease, Arrow Of God, A Man Of The People, Anthills Of The Savannah etc. Nigerians especially would probably not have known Achebe’s perspective in what is arguably the most lucid diagnosis and remedy of the Nigerian problem in The Trouble With Nigeria. And indeed a most revealing account of the Nigeria-Biafra war may also have been lost in There Was A Country.

Achebe was not just a great story-teller; he was a literary Pan-Africanist. Through his writing he contributed immensely in redirecting the orientation of the rest of the world on their dim perspective of African culture and history. He was literally saying particularly to our colonisers – before your arrival, we had a story and are proud to tell it. One of the more common features in the barrage of tributes and eulogies following the news of his death is that he was a patriot apart of course from his obvious literary feat. This is just as well because in his essays, lectures, interviews, books etc he had continued to engage the Nigerian question by not only pointing clearly at what the problem is in “The Trouble With Nigeria” where he put the problem squarely on leadership but also by suggesting remedies. His now famous rejection twice of the national honours was not as disrespect to Nigeria but as a protest of inept leadership. Similarly when he ignored sometime ago an appointment to the board of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) made over the radio, he was simply telling the government that things are not done that way.

Achebe’s long sojourn in the USA following a road accident which consigned him to the wheel chair for over two decades until his death did little to limit his intellectual contribution to the Nigerian project. Not long ago he gave a reverberating keynote address via video-conferencing at the 25th anniversary of The Guardian newspapers in Lagos, also his son Chidi Achebe delivered on his behalf an address at the Rainbow Book Club literary conference in Port Harcourt. Only recently, at the 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa held at Brown University Rhode Island USA December 2012, the large gathering of intellectuals brainstormed on the theme “Statecraft in the African Renaissance Amidst Regime Change”. His Excellency Babatunde Fashola, governor of Lagos State personally delivered a much acclaimed paper.

Achebe’s’ contribution to the Ahiajoku Lecture Series will remain invaluable reference material for a long time in the future. He was a man who naturally respected money and material acquisition but had clearly delineated boundaries which they did not cross. The story is told of a popular American musician who chose to title his upcoming film “Things Fall Apart” and when informed that Achebe had a copyright to the title he bragged that he would pay him off and offered a million dollars which Achebe rejected, informing him the title was not for sale not even for one hundred million dollars. Achebe would be leaving not only a legacy of principle, forthrightness, uncommon courage, classic story-telling etc, but an intellectual family of a wife who is professor of psychology, four children, two of whom are professors of history, one assistant professor of medicine and the other a writer all in the USA. Recognition, honour, awards etc, competed for his attention.”Things Fall Apart” published in 50 languages and selling over 12 million copies contributed enormously in making Achebe easily the most widely read African Writer on the globe. Just to mention a few from the Publisher’s blurb—he received the Honourary Fellowship Of The American Academy Of Arts and Letters, honourary doctorate degrees from more than 30 institutions, Nigerian National Merit Award , Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement. In 2007 he won the Man Booker international prize for lifetime achievement. Many expected he would have received the Nobel Prize for literature; the fact that he did not, never, in any way diminished his stature as the leading African writer in the world.